


We Built This City

by ungoodpirate



Series: Belated Pynch Week 2017 [2]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Day 2, It makes sense I swear, Lawyer Adam, M/M, Pynch Week, Ronan typical language, Superhero Ronan, behind the scenes superheros, domestic superhero stuff, pynch - Freeform, pynchweek2017, superhero au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-16 19:16:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11835252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ungoodpirate/pseuds/ungoodpirate
Summary: Ronan uses his dream powers to become a superhero.Including: utility belt inventories, couch cuddling, cool dream gadgets, impossible promises, and (surprisingly) absolutely no action sequences





	We Built This City

The man on the television looked sharp in his gray suit and commanding behind his official podium on marble steps, his blue eyes accented in high definition, 64 inch glory against his tan hair and face. 

“This city,” announced the man in a clear, articulated tone, “Will not abide the vigilante known to some as the Greywarren. The district attorney’s office maintains that unvetted, masked citizens should take the law into their own hands, and if the Greywarren or any copycats are ever caught, they will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.” 

The TV cut back to the news anchor, sitting behind her desk in the newsroom. “That was Assistant District Attorney Adam Parrish, speaking today at a press conference at city hall. Now over to --” 

Ronan lazily clicked the television to another channel and then flung to remote onto the couch cushion next to him.

Parrish was being entirely unfair, and would it kill the news anchor to balance out the story by mentioning the crime stats. The Greywarren was effective. He was a goddamn deterrent.

Ronan leaned forward, elbows to knees, inspecting the utility belt laid out on the coffee table. He was doing inventory -- God, what had become of his life. Inventory. -- seeing what he would have to dream up replacements for.

Like his father, Ronan could take things out of his dreams. Growing up, Ronan’s childhood had been touched by comic books, James Bond movies, and the height of Harry Potter mania. Fantastical things so readily existed in the fiction around him, they started popping up in his dreams as a child. A grappling hook that always landed, always stuck, used for climbing trees or up on the roofs of the barns. A cape that fluttered behind his shoulders even when their was no wind. Matthew had loved that one. 

Darkness pellets -- throw them down and cause instant darkness that only Ronan had dream goggles he to see threw -- were well stocked. He needed more self-tying rope, though. His last batch had be used up at a bank robbery he’d busted last week. He’d been avoiding it because those dreams got weird. Ronan drummed his fingers on the table in an otherwise silent count. He could probably go another week with the amount of mini-cams he had, smaller than any camera that existed in the human world, with 360 video and clear sound, all recorded to his home computer and streamed to his -- sigh -- phone. 

He had to pace out dreaming replacements and new things and actually just sleeping a solid few hours. 

Ronan heard the lock clicking in the door frame of his loft, and craned his neck onto the back of the couch to see: a familiar silhouette against the hallway light as the door opened, then the silhouette gone once the door was shut. 

“You really dug into me on the news today,” Ronan said. 

“What can I say?” Adam said, stepping forward into the dine of the television’s glow. He ruffled the edge of a manila folders contents with his thumb. Must’ve been something he had brought from work. Something he was thinking about. Something he couldn’t put down as he approached the couch. “You’re a menace to society.”

“People have been saying that since I was sixteen,” Ronan said. “It’s lost it sting.”

At sixteen years old -- with his father dead, mother hospitalized, older brother now a legal guardian who forced them to move to a foreign city that was a day’s drive away from their childhood home but might as well been on the other side of the world -- Ronan had been overcome with anger like it was full bodied sunburn. It stung every time he moved. It stung even when it didn’t. It made him twitchy and anxious and sick, and the only time he could forget about it was when he endangered himself with a punch thrown, a car raced, or a drink too far. In a few precious months he raked up school expulsions, speeding tickets, a few juvenile arrests, and a reputation. 

It took a few years and a spur of the moment intervention into some douche harassing some girl a little past midnight on an empty street for Ronan to find somewhere else to focus all that built up inside him. It had been a strange and freeing realization. He didn’t have to throw punches to handle pent up rage; he could throw punches to help other people. 

“Like it ever stung.” Adam took advantage of Ronan’s position to lean over and press on his mouth a quick kiss.

“How was your day?” Ronan asked, because he had been coached by Blue that this was something you were supposed to ask in a relationship. 

“Great,” Adam said as he rounded the couch and took the cushion seat beside Ronan. “I had a very successful press conference.”

“Haha.”

Adam sunk deeper into the couch cushion, leaning back, eyes shut, releasing a sigh and not all realizing what he was doing under the attention of Ronan’s hungry eyes. 

“Why do dress shoes have to hurt so much?” Adam asked. 

“To filter out the weak, probably,” Ronan replied. 

“I want to become an eccentric and sneakers to work.”

“I’ll dream you some killer insoles tonight.” 

“Dream yourself some self-tying rope first,” Adam said, peaking open one eye. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you’ve been procrastinating. Any backwoods, Virginia survivalist will tell you rope is indispensable… What’s this?”

Adam leaned forward and plucked up a glass orb from under the coffee table. It was not unlike a snow globe without a base. Inside, however, instead of glitter or fake snow, was a zapping flashes of lightning. 

“There’s that fucking thing,” Ronan said pleasantly. “Isn’t it cool? 

Adam turned it in his hand, long fingers with knotty knuckles splayed around the glass containing a lightning storm just a few inches away from his nose, inspecting. “What is it?”

“Prototype for a new gadget. Throw it down in front of a group of baddies. Shock them, knock them out maybe. Good for handling a group… Have no idea if it will work yet, or if it’s lethal or not. I’m dreamer, not a doctor.”

With a jarring movement, Adam set the orb down on the coffee table with care, eager to get it out of his hands. “Maybe don’t leave that lying around, then?... Or, you know, any of your Graywarren stuff. If someone walked in here, you’d totally give yourself away. Your mask is handing on the coat hook right now.”

“Who’s going to walk in here?” Ronan said. “I have like three friends, and they all know.” 

“Declan?” Adam said, eyebrows raised. 

“He maintains plausible deniability, but the first time Greywarren made the six o’clock news, he called me up on my phone and yelled at me.” 

“Matthew?” Adam contended with a softer tone. 

Ronan nodded, once, serious. Because Ronan was fiercely protective of his younger brother, the very first of his dreams brought to life. He didn’t want to give Matthew the pressure of keeping this secret, the pressure of worrying, the pressure of knowing the truth. 

Adam sagged against Ronan on the couch. “Can you put on Chopped? I want to watch deliciously food be eaten but I don’t have enough energy to walk to the fridge.” 

“Is that a hint you want me to cook?” Ronan joked.

“Just change the channel,” Adam said. “It was a very clever joke, dreaming up a remote that only reacts to your fingerprints.” 

“I made it when Gansey was still my roommate, so it’s not about you,” Ronan said, but reached over Adam to find the remote, and changed the channel anyway. 

When the first commercial break landed, Adam said quietly, “It’s important, though, that other people don’t try to copycat you. People will do it for the wrong reasons, get hurt, hurt themselves. Not everyone has your moral code. Not everyone can do what you can do.”

Ronan turned his head towards Adam. “So are you saying if I ever get arrested, will you actually prosecute me to the full extent of the law.”

Adam huffed. “If you ever get arrested, I’ll probably be prosecuted right next to you as an accessory.” He nodded at the manila folder he had brought home, now next to the lightning orb. It was probably some private case information from the DA’s office for Ronan to look into. He’d done it before. 

“Wow,” Ronan said sarcastically, looking askance in the room like he was contemplating something greatly important. “And then would happen to our shining mayor. Would he get accessory charges too? Or even --” A faked gasp. “Corruption.”

Looking mildly constipated at the thought, Adam said, “Leave… Leave Gansey out of it.”

“And think of the mayor’s wife. All of Blue’s conservation work. Her activism. Her foundation. Down the drain.”

“This isn’t funny.” 

“Don’t forget the mayor’s secret boyfriend.” 

“Ronan,” Adam warned, sitting up. Which sucked, because he had been leaning on Ronan’s shoulder, and the shared warmth had been quite nice, and don’t tell anyone, but Ronan Lynch, the Graywarren, protector of the city, the nightmare of criminals, the doer of impossible things, the dreamer, was a sucker for soft, cuddly affection. 

“You’re right,” Ronan said with a sage nod. “The world would be better off with one less lobbyist.” 

Adam pressed his palms against Ronan’s shoulders and held him still. “You better not get caught then. Don’t get caught. Don’t get hurt. Don’t get killed. I’ll never-- ” His voice hitched, his word twinged with an accent he had almost perfected hiding. Ronan glanced from his eyes to his freckly-but-only-up-close nose to his familiar, a little chapped lips, and up again. 

“Promise me,” Adam demanded. 

“I promise, Parrish,” Ronan said. 

“Ronan…”

Ronan laid his warm hand on Adam’s cheek. “Adam,” he said. “I promise.” 

Adam eased back down in his spot. Ronan snuck an arm around his shoulders as he leaned back into Ronan’s side. 

It was an impossible promise to make, to not die, but it was a promise he intended to keep.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my belated pynch week day 2. I was rushing to post this before midnight but I lost by like five minutes, but also that's my excuse it is doesn't have the best proofreading. But this counts as being posted on the 17th!
> 
> Anyway, I thought I was going to put an action sequence into this, but I hate writing those, so it just became domestic superhero boyfriends fluff and I love it.


End file.
